


Minuet and Trio

by azurefishnets



Series: Ghost Trick: Phantom Train (A Final Fantasy/Ghost Trick Crossover AU) [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VI, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: It's a start, Multi, Well - Freeform, teasing to death you say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29646849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurefishnets/pseuds/azurefishnets
Summary: Is it even a Jowd romance if there’s not an exhausting amount of teasing involved, is the question, and the answer is: no, it's not.
Relationships: Alma/Cabanela/Jowd (Ghost Trick)
Series: Ghost Trick: Phantom Train (A Final Fantasy/Ghost Trick Crossover AU) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1196335
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Minuet and Trio

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



Jowd caught Alma’s eye as the Vector diplomat twirled around the floor with his current dance-partner, a guard he’d evidently swept from his boring duties outside the door. The guard danced clumsily, but his face was intent on Cabanela’s—if Jowd were to say, it mirrored most of the faces that Cabanela whirled around the dance floor, i.e. smitten. But Cabanela’s face wasn’t on his partner’s; no, wherever he was in the ballroom, Cabanela’s eyes were on either the throne, if Jowd or Alma or both were sitting there, or if one of them were on the dance floor, it wasn’t long until they found themselves dancing next to Cabanela. Sometimes, he’d playfully cut in, leaving both the luckless partners, thus bereft, to dance themselves over to the drinks and catch their breaths.

Of course, it was usually Alma Cabanela so caught—Jowd could own himself a passible dancer due to his tutelage at his father’s hands, with all the finest dancing-masters Figaro could command to bolster that training, but he generally didn’t enjoy it with anyone but Alma and so rarely took the floor. She just fit right into his arms; she had the height to match him and always seemed to follow his lead with effortless grace. He didn’t have to work at dancing with her, and she always understood that he reached his tolerance level for it quickly.

Today, though, as he sat on his throne and watched Cabanela sneaking looks at him and Alma, who floated across the floor in the dignitary from South Figaro’s rather timorous grasp, Jowd found himself restless. The guard wasn’t a good partner for Cabanela, and Jowd kept finding his fingers tapping impatiently when the man stumbled and caught himself with a stammered, anxiously-smiling apology which Cabanela, ever-graceful as always, equally smilingly accepted before his attention moved back elsewhere.

They whirled out of sight and Jowd caught Alma’s eye again over the head of her dancing partner. She raised her eyebrows at him, and he realized he, too, had been staring. The music stopped, the piece finished, and Alma and her partner bowed to each other; Jowd found himself up and on his feet before they could raise themselves, and he just caught Alma’s knowing smile before he swung the other way to find Cabanela.

On the other side of the floor, Cabanela had just straightened up and had time to register that Jowd no longer sat on the throne before he felt the tap on his shoulder. He blinked at Jowd, and a smile spread as he said, “Well well weeell, baby, if this isn’t rarer than chocobo’s teeth I don’t know what would be. Come to tear up the dance floor?”

Jowd favored him with a smile and said, “Yes, I thought I might…care for a dance?” He turned his smile on the startled guard and, just as the music started, swung him into step and away from Cabanela. They twirled for a moment and watched as Cabanela, smile a little fallen but undeterred, found another partner and whirled back into the dance.

“Er, your Majesty?” said the guard, and Jowd realized he was staring at Cabanela again as they danced, and Alma was watching them both.

“Sorry for this,” he said, and deposited the guard after another few steps at the drinks table. “Get yourself a drink and then perhaps you should head back to your post?”

“Oh! Uh, yes, You Majesty,” the guard said, nearly fumbling a salute. “It was just—he—”

“Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble,” Figaro’s queen said, appearing from his other side and stealing the glass Jowd had just raised to his lips from his unresisting hands. “What the Vector ambassador wants the Vector ambassador generally seems to get.”

“O-oh?” the guard blushed. “Oh. Well, um… I mean…” he whirled and grabbed a drink, ears scarlet.

“Still,” Alma said, her smile quiet and contemplative as she pulled Jowd a little further away from the table, “I do believe our new friend should find out it’s not always quite so easy, don’t you?” She tugged Jowd into a quick kiss and then stepped back, eyes merry as she straightened his crown a little. “Maybe you should also learn the same lesson? Kings can’t have everything.”

Jowd snickered. “Can they not? I did luck into the perfect queen and through no work of mine.”

“Hmm, indeed you did…” Alma tapped a finger on her lips as she finished the last of her pilfered wine. “Perhaps you should consider what—or who— else luck has dropped into our lives.”

“Luck? Or pure determination?” Jowd said drily. “I believe he might swim here if he couldn’t catch the ship from Albrook at this point.”

“Well, then, what are you waiting for?” Alma shot him a smile full of pure knowing devilment. “Someone might cut in, you know.”

Jowd scanned the room, looking for Cabanela, and said absently, “I suppose I’d better see if he’d like to—" he looked to his queen, but she was already gone.

* * *

Cabanela twirled his latest partner into a dip and then let her up as she laughed, letting her have a bare moment to breathe. As he began to slide her into the next steps of the dance, he found himself lightly twirled the other way and his hapless partner handed easily to a surprised courtier who, until that moment, had been performing admirably as an extra support for the wall.

“Mind if I cut in?” his queen asked, and Cabanela found himself a little speechless as they spun together on the dance floor.

“So quiet tonight,” she chided him gently, and he smoothly took her lead.

“Should I say you outshine the sun, baby?”

“It’s a start,” she said, and smiled. “But who could ever outshine the man who’s dazzling everyone on the dance floor?”

“Well, the—” Cabanela blinked as Jowd neatly stepped in, leaving Alma to glide into the next steps on her own, “queen _and_ king of Figaro are fuuull of surprises tonight, I see.”

“We like to think we can keep you on your toes,” Jowd said, although his words belied his behavior as he struggled a little with who was to lead, his hard-won training temporarily abandoning him.

“Here, baby, like this—” Cabanela found himself dancing with Alma again, who effortlessly took lead and let Cabanela demonstrate how to follow. “I think perhaps I’m not quiiite up on the news,” Cabanela said, his tone just slightly bewildered, as Jowd took his hand back and this time managed to let Cabanela lead for a few steps. “Sooomeone’s leadin’ the dance here but it’s not me.”

Alma ducked under Jowd’s arm and they all three moved together for a few dizzy steps before she successfully managed to finagle them right off the crowded dance floor and onto a secluded balcony. The night air was startlingly cool and they all three shivered just a bit as they stepped away from each other, decorum mostly restored.

“Now what was that all about?” Cabanela said, his tone mild as he sauntered over to the balcony railing, looking up at the night sky. “That was a perfectly good dance with that guard you stole, baby.”

“Perfectly good and perfectly… I’d say, predictable,” Alma returned as she paced to his left side. “Not what we’ve come to expect from our ambassador at all, you know.”

Cabanela pretended to swoon. “You wooound me, my Queen. How can I make it up to you?”

Jowd stepped to his right, flanking Cabanela between the king and his queen. “Oh, perhaps another dance…one a little less predictable…might do it.”

“Another dance like that one just now, my King? You miiight give me ideas,” Cabanela returned, his voice light and trembling a little, probably from the cold.

Jowd reached up and unwrapped the formal stole he wore, a vestige if the evenings earlier ceremonies that had brought Cabanela for this visit in the first place. It was long and thin, really more of a scarf, and Jowd had always hated wearing it. Gently, allowing Cabanela time to draw away if he wanted to, he rewrapped it over Cabanela’s and Alma’s shoulders, drawing them both into an embrace. “Maybe a little slower. Warmer, possibly. I've heard of veil dances...surely there are scarf dances, wouldn't you say?”

Cabanela went still, his eyes searching theirs as he and Alma were encircled in Jowd’s arms. “Not much music out here, baby, not that that’s ever stopped me,” he managed at last, his own arms seeming to open without volition to return the embrace.

Alma turned to face him where they nestled in Jowd’s arms, so close they could almost breathe each other’s breath, and drew him even closer to lay her head on his shoulder and turn her face into his neck. She hummed a little, just a small tune, and said, “Oh, I’m sure we could find or make our own music for the kind of dance Jowd and I were thinking of.” Her lips were almost touching the beating vein in his throat.

Cabanela’s head tipped back and his eyes slid closed a little, although they flared open again in wonder when Jowd, his lips and beard just slightly scratching against Cabanela’s neck on the other side, said in tones that reverberated through them all, “Perhaps you could help us with that, as the most experienced dancer here.”

When Cabanela spoke, his voice was just the slightest bit strained and it might have been a little higher than usual if someone was listening quite intently. “Yes, I think I knooow a few dances for three people... and a scarf.”

“Oh really?” Alma drew back, eyes glimmering with what looked like delight but was pure mischief. “What wonderful news!”

“Oh?” Cabanela preened a little. “Always happy to help, baby.”

“Excellent,” Jowd said, ushering them inside and back to the warmth of the public eye and the crush of the ballroom. “You can bring the sheet music for the court musicians next time you visit.” He slid a glance over at Cabanela—the man, for just the barest instant, embodied the word ‘crestfallen’, but he perked up and strode backwards ahead of them, bowing them with a grand gesture back into the ballroom.

“Cooount on it, baby,” he said, and gave them both a wink that he meant to be insouciant, but both Alma and Jowd caught the look that immediately followed it before Cabanela whirled around to take back the dance floor. It mirrored all the people he’d left in his wake; if they were smitten, he had been utterly smote.

Alma squeezed Jowd’s hand and they shared a conspiratorial smirk as they watched Cabanela walk away with Jowd's ceremonial stole still fluttering behind him. It was a fashion that suited him, Jowd had to say; he could tell by Alma's interested eyebrows that she thought the same. Perhaps Cabanela would take the old fashioned Figaro-style with him and make it his, breathe new life into it, but that remained to be seen. For now, the evening was yet young, and this dance for three had only just begun.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy happy birthday, dear friend! May this year be even half as lovely as you are :D  
> I hope you enjoy the read and the day!


End file.
